


Fragments

by purple_cube



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 10:05:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_cube/pseuds/purple_cube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're two people broken beyond repair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragments

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Porn Battle XV, using the prompt 'pink'. Warning: suggestion of off-screen torture.

 

They find her in a cell far from the ones that they had rescued the former victors from.  
  
She’s thin and covered in a thick layer of dirt, but it’s the fact that she’s still wearing that damned pink wig that finally breaks him. It isn’t until he gets closer that he realizes that it’s been haphazardly placed on her head, and it’s the dried blood streaks emanating from its boundary that sucks the breath from his lungs.  
  
He signals to the soldiers from Thirteen to back off, physically pushing away the ones that ignore him. He gets down on his knees in front of her, holding his hands up to show her that she has nothing to be afraid of.  
  
“Effie?”  
  
It’s barely a whisper, and when she doesn’t respond, he tries again. The miniscule increase in volume is enough to get her attention, and she looks at him with eyes that are wide with fright. He knows that she doesn’t recognize him.  
  
“Effie, it’s Haymitch. From District Twelve, remember?”  
  
Her eyes cloud over. “Haymitch?” she whispers.  
  
He wants to respond, but realizes that she isn’t talking to him.  
  
“I didn’t know about Haymitch,” she continues, brows furrowed in concentration, as if she’s trying so very hard to remember something important. Suddenly, she’s back in the room, eyes full of desperation. “I didn’t know anything!”  
  
He grabs her upper arms, trying to shake her into reality. “Effie, _I’m_ Haymitch.”  
  
She screams, and it takes every fiber of his being to stop from recoiling.  
  
When one of the accompanying doctors steps forward with a syringe and plunges the needle into Effie’s arm, Haymitch holds her as she slumps into him.  
  
*  
  
Coin sighs and tells him that they may as well keep Effie in the Presidential Mansion too. Between his guilt over her and his guilt over the kids, he’s lucky that Paylor has the sense to keep his liquor shelf well-stocked.  
  
She visits him, just once, wearing borrowed clothes from some soldier from Thirteen. The hair on her head is starting to grow into a dark blonde tuft, and even through the haze of alcohol he can see that she’s looking better than when he last saw her.  
  
She drifts through his room with a carefully crafted apathy that almost makes him smile – because it’s such an _Effie_ thing to do. But then she looks at him, eyes harder than he has ever known, and he knows that as sure as he never left his Games, the Boy and Sweetheart are gone, and so is Effie.  
  
“Was it worth it?”  
  
He can only look at her.  
  
“Did you win?” she continues, a little louder now.  
  
His mind transports him back to a different time and a different conversation. _Nobody ever wins the Games, period. There are only survivors._  
  
“I wasn’t playing a game, Trinket. I was part of a war. I survived.” He watches her for a long moment. “So did you.”  
  
She scoffs as she turns away from him, and if it didn’t hurt so much he would laugh and tell her how ill-mannered she is.  
  
“That remains to be seen.”  
  
She has her hand on the door handle before he finally says what he thinks that she needs to hear. “I thought that they couldn’t hurt you if you didn’t know anything. I’m sorry.”  
  
“Is that what you told Peeta?”  
  
 _Ouch_. “I’ll never forgive myself for what happened to that boy.”  
  
“But you can forgive yourself for what happened to me?”  
  
“ _You_ weren’t my responsibility,” he responds, struggling not to shout.  
  
She opens the door, glancing back for a final time. “No. I don’t suppose that I was.”  
  
*  
  
A week before the first Remembrance Day, she turns up at his door. Her hair is loose and straight and rests on her shoulders and she’s wearing a simple white cotton dress. He can’t recall her ever looking more beautiful.  
  
“I couldn’t stay there any longer,” she mutters as she brushes past him, not waiting for an invitation.  
  
“Well, you’re not staying here,” he calls after her.  
  
Turns out he has as much control over her as he does over the geese.  
  
*  
  
She leaves the day after the ceremonies are over and the new memorial has been unveiled.  
  
“I wouldn’t want to outstay my welcome,” she tells Peeta, her eyes never leaving Haymitch.  
  
“Then you shouldn’t have shown up in the first place,” he mutters.  
  
He watches as the boy, and surprisingly even the girl, say fond goodbyes as if they mean them.  
  
*  
  
Two months pass before she returns. This time she greets him with a sharp slap across his left cheek.  
  
“I told you we were a team,” she hisses.  
  
He flexes his jaw beneath his hand. “What?”  
  
“We’re a team, and you’re supposed to be looking after them.”  
  
This time when she moves past him into the house, he shoves her against the wall, using his weight to keep her in place.  
  
“That hurt,” he growls.  
  
“It was supposed to.”  
  
Her features soften a moment later, and he loosens his grip, giving her room to shift her body.  
  
“Peeta called me about his episode last week. You should have helped.”  
  
He sighs. “It wasn’t the first, and it won’t be the last. Katniss was never going to take control while she has me to rely on.”  
  
“So it was a test?”  
  
“In a manner of speaking,” he says evasively. “For the record, she _did_ have it under control. And so did he, no matter what he believes.”  
  
The fight leaves her body, and she relaxes under his grasp. Slowly, he backs away until they’re no longer touching.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Is that an apology from Effie Trinket?”  
  
She rolls her eyes. “It’s an acknowledgement that you’re not as despicable as I thought you were.” She glances past him. “I’ll take my previous room.”  
  
*  
  
She wakes him one day, by accident of course. He’s slumped head-first on the kitchen table – at least until the sound of a bottle crashing to the floor wakes him. He twists unsteadily as he gets to his feet, whirling his knife blindly through the air.  
  
It takes over a minute for him to realize that she’s disarmed him and stabbed the blade into the side of the table.  
  
“You took my knife,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose in the vain hope that it will stop the room from spinning.  
  
“You’re drunk,” she says dismissively. “You shouldn’t have a weapon in your hands.”  
  
“Anyone ever tell you you’re hot when you’re being all dominant, Trinket?”  
  
She looks him up and down with something that isn’t entirely disgust, and even through the haze he thinks that this may be an improvement.  
  
“If you ever find your way to the shower, I might consider it,” she retorts.  
  
 _Well_.  
  
*  
  
One day, she starts cleaning and doesn’t stop until the entire house is scrubbed raw and bright and every item is placed in a neat pile on a shelf or in a cupboard.  
  
He thanks her like he means it.  
  
“Just make sure it stays this way after I leave.”  
  
Maybe it’s the drink, or lack of it, or maybe it’s the thought of her leaving, but he pulls her to him and kisses her – like he means it.  
  
He feels something like relief when she kisses him back, and somehow they find their way to the guest room that she’s claimed for herself. When the door closes behind him, he could almost imagine that they’re in another time and place, that they’re two people who aren’t broken beyond repair.  
  
It’s been so long that he wonders if he will remember how to do this. When she climaxes under his hand, he smiles and decides it’s probably something that you don’t forget.  
  
When she flips them over and grinds against him until she comes again, he watches her expression and prays that he’ll never forget.  
  
And when he buries himself inside her, he thinks that although they’ll never be whole, maybe they’re two fragments that fit together to create something a little a less broken.

 


End file.
